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Earth Month: 12 intriguing new environmental books

Computers built to be disassembled, highway fences that collect solar energy or carpets that clean the air. These are examples of "upcycling" that architect William McDonough says may help save the world.

Computers built to be disassembled, highway fences that collect solar energy or carpets that clean the air. These are examples of "upcycling" that American architect William McDonough says may help save the world.

In his optimistic new book, he and co-author Michael Braungart, a German chemist, see nearly endless possibilities for how forward-thinking design and cutting-edge technology can steadily improve products and solve today's problems — except, perhaps, for climate change.

"This isn't reversible. We can't hit the brakes and turn around," says McDonough, whose landmark 2002 book Cradle to Cradle encouraged the manufacture of products that can be reused. "I don't see any quick fixes. We'll have to live a long time with what we've done."

In Earth Month comes to a close, USA TODAY selects 12 recent books on the environment that offer tales of adventure, innovative ideas and cogent analyses of lingering problems — whether climate change, toxic chemicals or ocean pollution. Some are sober stories of children suffering lead poisoning or coastal communities sinking into the sea. Others are more hopeful.

American architect William McDonough co-authors a new book, "The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability -- Designing for Abundance," that encourages people to find ways to return things better than they found them.(Photo: Courtesy of William McDonough)

McDonough is an optimist. He sees the glass as half full — not half empty — and getting bigger. His goal is not simply to reuse products or designs but to upcycle — make them better so they leave a positive footprint. In his new book,The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability — Designing for Abundance (North Point Press), he says there are now ways to make buildings capture more solar power than they use so the surplus goes into the grid or to make water coming out of factories cleaner than when it arrived.

"I'm most optimistic on the business side, because business is fast," he says. "Government often chases business." He says China's leadership, a mix of business and government, is eager to make environmental changes, because its country's air is filthy.

He says the world can be powered with clean energy, but it has to stop cutting down the rain forests to get palm oil to make biofuel. "At some point, we have to put the Earth out there as a destination and ask: What do we want?"

In a foreword, former president Bill Clinton says The Upcycle is "about creativity, about thinking big even if we have to act small." McDonough says he wants to inspire, not frighten, and adds: "Tell your children that things are looking up."

Other Earth Day selections:

• What We Know About Climate Change (MIT Press) by Kerry Emanuel. In this second, slim (93-page) edition, Emanuel offers an updated and easy-to-read summary of the science of man-made climate change. A professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he says scientists agree on the broad outlines of the problem but still have plenty to learn.

• Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science (Northbrae Books) by John J. Berger. This book looks at the fossil fuel industry's efforts to obfuscate the causes and effects of climate change. Berger, who has written widely on climate and energy, says its campaign is modeled on how cigarette companies sought to convince Americans that tobacco wasn't a health hazard.

• Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Gabrielle Walker. A five-time visitor to Antarctica, Walker shares what it's like to live with minus-60 degree Celsius temperatures, six months of darkness and pollution-prevention rules that include take-home-for-disposal urine bags. She shows how this vast ice sheet is like another planet and how some of it is breaking up because of global warming.

• Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation(Banton) by Dan Fagan. This is the story of kids getting cancer at elevated rates in the New Jersey seaside town of Toms River, where chemical companies had dumped toxic waste. A journalism professor at New York University, Fagan writes about how during the 60-year saga, which culminated in a massive legal settlement in 2001, scientists and physicians struggled to figure out what was going on and residents pushed for answers and justice.

• Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest to Save a Troubled Planet (Globe Pequot Press) by Todd Wilkinson. This biography, with a foreword by Turner, shares details of the media mogul's private life: his troubled relationship with his father, who committed suicide, and his marriage to actress Jane Fonda. Wilkinson, a journalist, looks at how Turner has populated his 2 million acres of property (size of Yellowstone National Park) with 55,000 bison and 250,000 prairie dogs, saying he's using it as "arks" for imperiled species.

• Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them (Rodale) by Ted Danson.The star of the former hit TV series Cheers says he began learning about the oceans in the early 1980s, because he wanted to do more with his life than act. He says he realized that "being a celebrity was not very different from being a 5-year-old in a room of adults. Everyone is focused on you." In 2001, he helped found Oceana, an international organization focused on ocean conservation. He says overfishing Is destroying fish populations, but if that practice is curbed, he's optimistic they can bounce back.

• Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines (W.W. Norton & Company) by Richard Muller. Nuclear power is safe, and storage of its spent fuel rods is not a difficult problem, writes Mueller, a physics professor at the University of California-Berkeley. He says the United States isn't running low on fossil fuels, but transportation fuels and the solution lies with natural gas, shale oil reserves, improved automobile mileage and synfuel or manufactured gasoline.

• High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Levels and the Coming Coastal Crisis (Science Bookshelf) by John Englander.Sea levels will rise for hundreds of years, regardless of changes in greenhouse gas emissions, Englander writes. He says coastal property values will fall and many people will move inland. An oceanographer, he says beach restoration and sandbags may temporarily work in some places, but bold engineering like sea walls and elevated buildings also will be needed.

• Nature's Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive By Investing In Nature (Basic Books) by Mark R. Tercek and Jonathan S. Adams.The authors say businesses and governments need to invest in nature, because it's a smart financial move that will reduce costs and protect assets. Tercek, CEO of the Nature Conservancy and former managing director at Goldman Sachs, says environmentalists need to shift from telling others what to do (or not do) to problem-solving that helps others see why nature is valuable to them.

• Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change(Oxford University Press) by Andrew Guzman. This book is a cautionary tale of what will happen if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius, a fairly optimistic scientific prediction. Guzman, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley, says it could incite terrorism as groups fight for scarcer resources, cause island nations to disappear, and displace millions of people to refugee camps where infectious disease could spread. He says California's most important source of water, the Sierra Snowpack, could shrink by a third by 2050.

• Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children(The University of California Press) by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. The authors examine lead poisoning during the past half-century and the obstacles public health officials have faced in tackling not only lead and mercury but also the more recent environment threats posed by potentially toxic PCBsand BPA. Markowitz is a history professor at John Jay College, and Rosner is a public health professor at Columbia University.